Requiem
by nasimiyu
Summary: I'm bad at summaries, but please read and please review. This all happens before the first book. Thanks. I intend to weave in all the major Twilight characters who we all know are owned not by me, but by Stephenie Meyer at some point
1. Chapter 1

_Pease porridge hot, Pease porridge cold, Pease porridge in the pot nine days old_

_Some like it hot, Some like it cold, Some like it in the pot nine days old_

I could see the three young girls laughing and singing in the courtyard below my bedroom window. Two held the skipping rope at either end counting out how many days old Chesleigh's porridge was. She tripped on eight. Chesleigh was my youngest sister. She was but seven years old, fair-skinned and golden-haired with eyes that were bluer than the midday sky on a summer day. A beautiful child. She was my father's favourite, and mine. The other two were my cousins, Annabelle and Dillian. The twins would be fifteen when November drew to a close, and never a pair of sillier girls have I ever had the misfortune to encounter. Annabelle was a giggler and Dillian a simperer and both liked nothing better than to procure a shilling or two from their uncle to go into town and buy themselves another blue ribbon or fake ivory comb. They would be returning to their home in Colchester in two weeks time, and I sincerely hoped that their influence on Chesleigh would not be permanent.

It was sunset now, and right below my window, the front door to our house opened. Mother poked her head out of the door and called to the girls to hurry indoors. It wasn't safe in London after dusk. Dillian and Annabelle dropped the rope and skipped into the house, mother ruffling their hair as they squeezed past her through the door. Chesleigh was struggling with the rope, trying to coil it up and bring it in with her. Her golden head appeared to be aflame as it reflected the orange rays of the setting sun. She looked up and saw me in the window above, flashing me a smile as she ran towards mother, with the coiled rope in her hand. And then she was gone, and mother was screaming. I dashed down the stairs and out into the courtyard and found mother there, still screaming in distress, screaming silently now, for sound had ceased coming out of her mouth.

"What happened mama? Where is Chesleigh?" I asked, knowing the answer. They had got her.

Father got home five minutes later to find us still in the courtyard. Mother was no longer screaming. She just stood there, frozen like a statue. Wrapped in her own arms. The very image of misery. Father had never been the one to provide comfort to us, which was ironic considering his line of work. He didn't know what to do with the mute, clearly distressed statue that was his wife. He slapped her once on the left cheek, and commanded her to snap out of it.

"Take your mother inside" he barked at me when his remedy failed.

He was never the same after that day, and neither was she. He withdrew from the rest of us completely, perhaps afraid to lose another child. Mother never spoke again.

They floated her back to us on the Thames three days later. Her white sun dress with the blue trim stained a deep permanent brown by the murky waters of the river. Our beautiful seven year old Chesleigh. Eyes open and blue as ever, only this time more like an artist's blue on canvas than the midday summer sky. Not quite right. Her body stiff as a board and completely drained of blood. Distinct puncture wounds in her neck. Wounds that could only have been made by a set of razor-sharp human teeth. We knew then, that the rumours were true. The creatures we had thought were only the stuff of dreams and nightmares ran freely among us, hunting us, feeding on us, murdering us.

We buried her in the churchyard. It was just me and my other sisters, and the priest from St. Patrick's Cathedral. Father could not bear to see the tiny white coffin, nor his little angel inside it, and mother had left for Cornwall under Dr. Pottersmith's advice. She had not been allowed to see Chesleigh's corpse at all, because the good doctor thought that the shock would be too much for her. The fresh sea-air at Cornwall was supposed to do calm her nerves and do her much good. And so it was that a young man and three children witnessed their sister's burial with only each other for support.

Mother never returned from Cornwall. She died there at the end of the summer from a severe attack of unseasonal influenza, a weak constitution and the lack of a will to live. Her sister, whom she had been staying with, later told us that she would have nightmares in which the thing that had taken Chesleigh came back for her. She had seen it for the merest fraction of a second as it grabbed Chesleigh, and she had never forgotten its eyes. With mother gone, we were as good as orphaned. With mother gone, we had absolutely no hope.


	2. Chapter 2

Once on a Sunday afternoon while taking a stroll down our street, I had wandered absent-mindedly into my father's church. Chesleigh was seated at the old upright in the choir, playing my favourite church hymn. Playing it by ear remarkably well for a child who had never had any sort of schooling. She was rather tiny and while seated on the piano stool, her feet dangled in the air a good foot above the floor. The afternoon sun was shining through the stained glass windows casting coloured light into the building. Chesleigh was dressed in the same dress she died in; the white sun dress with the blue trim, and the sunlight cast rainbows upon her. It was one of my favourite memories of her. I could tell the moment she knew I was watching her, her small shoulders stiffened then relaxed, but she did not stop her playing. When she was done, she turned around on the stool,

"Did you enjoy it Carlisle?" she'd asked.

"Very much so. When did you learn to play so well?"

She giggled once. Then turned and played the piece again, just for me, before dismounting from the stool and walking to me.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," she said solemnly. Then, "Let's go home. I'm hungry."

We walked through the graveyard behind the church and jumped over the fence into the backyard of the vicarage where we lived. Our father was in the graveyard, communing with the souls he had buried in the course of his twenty years as vicar. We waved at him as we went by but he didn't notice us, so intent on chewing his pipe and meditating he was.

Chesleigh had been six, and since then, I had been saving my wages from my afternoon employment as a clerk in a merchant's shop in town in order to hire a governess to teach her at home. She would have become one of London's, nay, England's most accomplished ladies on her instrument. It was to be my present to her for her eighth birthday. I used the money to buy her coffin instead, and to hire the priest from St. Patrick's to perform the funeral. Our father had been too distraught to do the ceremony himself, and once word had got round of the manner of Chesleigh's death, it proved difficult to find a man of the cloth willing to risk being tainted by the evil that had killed her.

Aye, Chesleigh was dead as a nail, and my parents dead with her. Mother was physically gone and father was as good as dead for all the notice he took of us. I tried to raise my other sisters as best I could but desperate to escape the drear and gloom and melancholy that seemed to have taken permanent residence at the vicarage, they both married much too young and moved away from London, one to Guernsey and the other to Hereford. It was just me and Father then, and we barely spoke. I worked all day at the merchant's shop now and only saw him in the evening when I returned. He was usually preparing to leave for the hunt. Since Chesleigh's death, father had been organising his congregation every night to hunt the creatures that killed her. Whether or not they ever caught a real vampire, I do not know, I never went on their hunts, but I do not doubt, knowing all I know now about our kind, that they burned a lot of innocent people to death.

It was during one such hunt that Father lost his legs. They were chasing an unfortunate soul through the dark streets when father, not paying attention to the flow of traffic, ran right into the flow of carriages and a team of horses thundered right over him, snapping his spine and rendering him an invalid. That was how I became the new vicar of St. Andrew's Anglican Church. Father retired after his accident and I took over from him, inheriting both the vicarage and the living that went with it. Unfortunately, I also inherited the hunt for vampires, and it was a task at which my father made sure I directed all my efforts towards.


	3. Chapter 3

"How foul the night winds doth blow, father" I said as I hung up my threadbare cloak.

The clock in the hallway had just struck three in the morning, and I was returning home after another night of hunting. Father was seated in his armchair by the fireplace. The fire was long dead and only a few still-glowing embers lit the room. He was awake. He was always awake these days it seemed to me. He grunted in reply to my comment, looking up at me expectantly, then turning his face away. But not fast enough. Never fast enough for me to miss the disappointment in his eyes. I was failing him. Nay. I had already failed him. Since I had taken over the vicarage there had been no vampires caught, no burnings, no decapitations. I knew he was frustrated, but I was loath to kill innocent men. I had to be absolutely sure that I had found a real vampire before I led a bloodthirsty mob in its murder.

"We will get them father. I promise we will."

"You are too soft Carlisle. Had I been out there we would have got all of them already!"

He went quiet after that, and seemed to shrink in his chair. As though the very effort of speaking had drawn every ounce of life from his body, leaving the faintest whisper of a human being in there. He needed to take better care of himself. I needed to take better care of him. He sat day and night in his armchair by the fireplace, barely eating enough to sustain him. He'd lost his appetite for everything. It had been months since he'd had any human company other than mine and his nurse's, and I barely counted for we hardly ever spoke, he and I. I never knew what to say to him.

"Tea, father?" I asked, relighting the fire and placing a kettle over it.

He made a non-commital grunt, and I got out a mug for him from the cupboard.

"I had the most interesting interview with Betty Parsings, Harold Parsings' wife, remember him father?"

Silence.

"He gave us a loan to retile the roof three years ago. He was - "

"I remember him." His voice was hoarse from disuse.

"Well, Betty Parsings lost her left arm in a rather interesting fashion I dare say. They had a little girl, Juliana, who was taken like..." I paused.

"Like our Chesleigh," he was sitting up now, a little bit more life flowing into his eyes from somewhere deep inside him.

"Yes. Like our Chesleigh. Her mother was with her. Old Harold was gone into Surrey on business, and the little girl had asked to sleep with her mother. They had a fire burning in a stove in the chamber, no chimneys though, so the window had to be left cracked open for the carbon monoxide, you know? Anyway, in the middle of the night, Mrs. Parsings estimates it was two thirty, she awoke to something ice cold brushing her arm. She saw it father, pale white with eyes as red as coals, she said, and it took the girl and went out the window, but not before biting her, for she screamed. She says it burned like hell's fires. Her arm where it bit her, that is. She screamed as though Lucifer himself had come to get her and the entire household was disturbed and came bursting into her rooms. The lady remembers not much else, she was in agony, see? But the help told me the rest. The groundsman had run into the room with his axe, thinking there to be an intruder, and when he saw the bite and heard her scream that her arm was on fire, he chopped off the appendage right at the shoulder (and everyone was too shocked to even stop him), then asked the maid to run down the street for the doctor. So what do you think, father? Very fascinating, is it not?"

My father's eyes were positively brilliant, and the colour seemed to be flowing back into his cheeks. He did not answer me though, but gave me that expectant look and I knew he wished to hear more.

"I didn't get a chance to speak to the groundsman. I was told that he said something about evil being about and resigned his post. They don't know where he went. Mrs. Parsings is well though, or as well as anyone could expect. The doctor was able to save her life even after that rudimentary amputation. They showed me the arm. It is sitting in the doctor's cabinet on Newham Street. It's rather bizarre how cold it is, ice cold, and hard as a rock. And no signs of rot whatsoever."

"And the child?" My father asked.

"Ah Juliana, yes. That was my primary reason for visiting the Parsings. This morning, well yesterday morning really, I received word from Harold Parsings that his daughter was recently dead and that the family would like me to perform the rites on her before they buried her. They feared for her soul since she had been touched by an unspeakable evil. I saw the corpse. It was stiff and white as chalk and drained of blood. It had bite marks everywhere, as though whatever had killed the child had sought to make sure that every single drop of blood was drained from her. They have, for the sake of their remaining children, kept the matter quite hushed up. We will bury her tomorrow."

"So what do you plan to do Carlisle? You cannot keep taking your time in this matter. These creatures must be destroyed."

"Well father," I said, refilling his mug of tea, "Juliana Parsings is but one of many who have been taken from the area surrounding Newham Street. I have suspected for a while, that the vampires must originate somewhere in that area. Perhaps in the sewers? It seems to me that such evil creatures would not mind living in the filth of London's sewers with the rats and other such pests. This evening, right before sunset we will wait for them to emerge from the underground and when they do, we will destroy them."

He nodded. My father nodded thoughtfully over his hot mug of tea, the steam rising up over his face and clouding up his round spectacles, and I knew he was pleased with what I had told him. I left him there at the fireplace and went up to bed. It would be the last real conversation I would have with him. The next day when I went down, he wasn't in his chair. He had a nurse who came in daily and she told me he was in his bed, finally asleep. I remember smiling at her, the nurse. She had blue eyes like Chesleigh's, like my mother's. I remember nothing else about her. I think she was beautiful. I have no recollection of what her name was, and yet I think I had loved her once. In all likelihood, I would have married her before the year was out. I remember walking out of the door and on to Newham Street to visit my parishioners, the Parsings, and prepare for Juliana's funeral. I never returned home.


	4. Chapter 4

It was freezing that night. I remember feeling as though the blood were thicker in my veins. Sluggish as it moved along reluctantly, unable to disobey the beats of my heart. I felt as though my bones must be as cold as the pavement beneath my feet. My breath rose before me in wispy clouds. I heard not. I barely saw in the darkness that was black as midnight. The wall before me had been white once, but it was grimy and grey now, caked with the filth of centuries of a modernising London, and they reflected no light in the darkness. It had been months since any stars had been visible in the night sky, and the dark clouds rolled ahead overhead, oblivious to the trivialities of the human beings below. We had been waiting all night, and it was now approaching four in the morning. Several of the men with me had fallen asleep on the ground, wrapped in their heavy winter coats, and the rest, like me, preferred to keep their own counsel. No one spoke. No crickets sang to each other in the park a block away, and even the frogs in the pond therein were silent. No dogs barked, no owls hooted, no late (or early) carriages ran by. No horses twitched and whinnied in their sleep, no pots clanged, no shutters banged, no couples screamed in the throes of passion, nor yelled at each other in domestic upheaval. London was dead at four in the morning.

We all saw it at the same time, those of us who were awake. The briefest flash of red in the hole that let out the noxious sewer gases. And then it was gone. We watched more carefully after that… silent as tombs, still as statues, hardly daring even to draw breath. It reappeared after five minutes had gone by. Two steady gleams of red. Its eyes, we realised. Followed by a torso, then arms and legs. It had a human form at any rate. As soon as it was clear of the hole, we pounced. It was old and shaggy, and there were many of us. It took off and we followed it through street after street, alley after alley. Torches lit, yelling for blood, seeming very much like animals ourselves. It was fast, but not enough that we could not keep it in our sights. The lights came on in the buildings in our wake; London was stirring from the commotion. It must have been very weak, the vampire. It suddenly stopped, and turned, and seemed to remember that we were its prey. I was ahead of the pack and it got to me first, grabbing me with strength that belied its appearance of weakness. I heard the bones in my forearm crack and snap into pieces. The pain was dull compared to what I felt when it bit me. I was on fire. It drank deeply from the wound, and then the crowd was upon us, and it abandoned me. Taking off with old Harold Parsings who had been a step ahead of the crowd. They thundered on past me, after the vampire and his prey. One of the older men in the group tripped over my boot and fell on the pavement, picking himself up with difficulty.

"Have heart, Carlisle! We'll get him yet!" he said, taking off after the mob. He hadn't noticed the blood.

The sounds of the mob faded, and London behind them once again slumbered into a midnight death. I saw her then, and she was frightened. My sister. My wonderful, beautiful seven-year-old sister. She was terrified of me, for I was becoming the very thing that destroyed her.

"Noooooo!!" I screamed in agony. A pain that was not physical tearing me to shreds inside.

Above me, a light came on again in the window, and someone drew back the drapes, peering outside. I suppressed the cries that had been about to erupt from my mouth. A few moments. It seemed like eternity before the drapes were shut again. Another lifetime before the light went out.

I crawled then, along the pavement till I came to a building with a broken cellar door. I let myself in and dropped to the floor, no longer fighting the red haze of fiery pain that was taking over my senses. Already my sense of self-preservation was doubling, tripling what it had been before.

I reached out with my hand and felt about me. Soft and round and tuber-like. Potatoes. Something, a rat I think, sniffed about my face and then scurried away. Already fearful of what I was becoming. I buried myself in the potatoes, willing fate to keep me hidden. I knew my father. I knew his soul. He would have me destroyed if he found out that the vampire had bitten me. It would kill him to do it, but he would have me destroyed.

The stench of rot.

"Great. Rotten potatoes," I had time to think before the fire enveloped me completely, and I could think of nothing else except the wish for, the need for, the absolute necessity of my immediate death.


End file.
